by Steven Kepnes. Review. Why Should the Jews Survive? by Michael Goldberg.

By the zak - 1/20/08 - 8:36 am

by Steven Kepnes
REVIEW
Why Should Jews Survive? by Michael Goldberg
"Having succeeded in putting Holocaust museums in most
major Arnerican cities, American Jews now find themselves caught in
these museums like labyrinths with no exits."

in
Modern Judaism, Vol. 19, No. 1. (Feb., 1999), pp. 95-102.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bpl.org/view/02761114/ap050055/05a00070/
Modern Judaism is currently published by Oxford University Press.

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"In his recent book, "Why Should the Jews Survive?" Michael Goldberg
adds his name to the growing list of rabbis and Jewish philosophers
who have described the problem of Holocaust-centered
Judaism. Americans have become obsessed with the ritual repetition and
cultic commemoration of the story of the death of European Judaism at
the hands of the Nazis and the silence and inactivity of humanity and
of God. This Holocaust meta-story enshrines a view of Jews as passive
victims of a cruel anti-Semitic world closed to divine salvific hope
and redemptive possibility. It is a world in which Jews increasingly
find little reason to remain Jews and to commit themselves to Jewish
ritual life and practice. The cult of the Holocaust has rendered us
preoccupied with our victimhood and defense, with our mourning and
loss, with an absent God to whom it seems absurd to pray."

Michael Goldberg, Why Should Jews Survive?
(Oxford and New York, 1995).191pp.
excerpt at
http://books.google.com/books?id=LKMldMDpS88C&dq=why+should+jews+survive
"Goldberg launches a bold attack on what he calls the "Holocaust cult," challenging Jews to return to a deeper, richer sense of purpose."
"Rabbi Michael Goldberg has long wrestled with the crisis of identity facing today's Jewish community. In Why Should Jews Survive?, he provides a provocative and powerfully argued challenge to the dominant theme of modern Jewish thought."
Contents
1. A Tale of Two Stories: Exodus vs. Holocaust, 3
2. Surviving the Holocaust: What Survived? How? and Nu . . . ? 19
3. The Holocaust Cult, 41
4. Is the Only Good God a Dead God? 67
5. A New Sinai, A New Torah, and the 614th Commandment, 89
6. The Household of Israel: Is Anybody Home Besides Anne Frank
and Eleazar ben Ya'ir? 121
7. Why Should Jews Survive? 153
Glossary, 179
Index, 185